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Should you update to WordPress 5.0?

Joost de Valk 4 December 2018 153 ,

WordPress 5.0 is coming out December 6th, or, as I’m writing this, the day after tomorrow. This came as a surprise to us, as this release date has only been communicated to the community today. Given this short notice, we thought it would be wise to give you advice on what you should do. Note that Yoast SEO has been ready for this release for a few weeks.

Update January 21, 2019: We’re happy to announce we feel it’s safe to update to WordPress 5.0 now! Always make sure to test, though.

There are several decisions you should make before updating to WordPress 5.0:

  • Is now the right time to update?
  • Can your site work with Gutenberg?
  • Do you need it?

Is now the right time to update?

If you have a holiday coming up, or if this is a busy time in your company’s or site’s yearly calendar: postpone updating. Everything in this release will still be there in January. In fact, as multiple patch releases are being planned already, it’s probably going to be more stable in January.

Can your site work with Gutenberg?

WordPress 5.0 introduces Gutenberg. Gutenberg changes the way the editor works in WordPress, read this post if you don’t know what it is. Overall, we think it’s an improvement.

But not all plugins are ready, and it’s important to know if the plugins you are using are ready before you hit update. If you only run Yoast SEO, you’re fine. If you run other plugins that integrate with the editing experience, make sure to check (either by testing or checking the plugins documentation) that they’re ready for, or at least “work with” Gutenberg. If they don’t, install and activate the Classic editor plugin before updating.

Do you need WordPress 5.0?

If there is no compelling reason for you to update, our suggestion is going to be: wait. WordPress 5.0 will probably be more stable in January than it is now. Let’s be clear: we absolutely love Gutenberg and what Yoast SEO looks like in Gutenberg. The Schema blocks we’ve added are very cool. Yoast SEO is ready. We don’t think WordPress 5.0 is as stable as it should be.

So our advice boils down to: if you can wait, wait. 

When you upgrade to WordPress 5.0

When you upgrade, please, as always: make a backup. If you have a staging environment, please use it. If you don’t have one, and your site is critical to your business, get one. This goes for every major software release though, not just this one.

Avatar of Joost de Valk
Joost de Valk

Joost is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Yoast. He has a long history in WordPress and digital marketing. On our blog, he has written a lot about SEO in general, technical SEO and important topics related to SEO.

Discussion (153)

  1. I don’t know if the mistake is coming from my end, but i could use Yoast when i installed Disable Gutenberg By Jeff Starr. But when i deactivate the plugin, the active functions of Yoast cease, it just keeps showing the red sign, but in classic editor, i tend to see that my page is optimized with green sign on Readability and SEO. What could the problem? I have also deactivated all plugins temporarily.

  • I hate WordPress 5.0. I’m building a brand new site in Gutenberg and the new editing system is clunky and painful to work with. No, I DON’T want to have a new section for a title. It was so much easier to just highlight the words I wanted to turn into a title and change them. NO – I DON’T want a new section for each paragraph. Just let me hit return and add a paragraph. Adding images has become painful. Before all I had to do was click where I wanted the picture to be and add it in. Now I have to add a new section, put the image in, click up and up and up to position the image, and then click some more to get it to right, left or center justify, and then drag it to the size I need. What a waste of my time!

  • I updated to WordPress 5.01 yesterday. Since then i was not able to update my pages anymore. The Editor was not working. I cant switch to visual or text version of editor…just whitescreen inside page content. I found out that yoast Plugin seemed to cause the issue. As Yoast answered in some comments below here there is a conflict between yoast and other plugins. Yoast by itself works great with wordpress 5.0 or 5.01. At my place it was a conflict with the Typeform Plugin. When i disable Typeform Plugin i can use yoast with wordpress 5.0 again and everything works fine.

  • Thanks for the post m8s, thank to my self too for search and read this.
    With all these comments i ll hold my horse who was in hurry to update and i ll go for it at 2020… at least…lol
    I had lots of accidents with wordpress and always i have a ready backup not only before a major update but even for a simple plugin update!

  • Tried the Gutenberg plug-in a while back, had to uninstall it because I just couldn’t my head around it, found the site became un-editable.

    I’m going to take your advice and wait until after the holiday period, then update and install the classic editor plug-in. Gutenberg may be great for website developers but for anyone like myself just wanting to operate a website, it feels like an unnecessary distraction.

    Thanks for another great post.

  • Thank you for the guidance. I’ve been wary about the 5.0 update myself, not just because I find the Gutenberg experience to be lacking in terms of UX, but also because WP seemed like they rushed this version out the door. I’m usually aggressive about keeping my software up-to-date for security reasons, but I’m definitely on the side of “Wait for further patches” right now.

  • It is SO SLOW! It is taking me forever just to do something as simple as changing paragraph text to header text??!??

  • I am a retired person and just going to start learning WordPress to create a website for a non-profit organization. It will have very little blogging on it and be more of a website displaying information about the organization.
    I have read through all your great posts and my question is would you suggest I jump right in and learn Gutenberg or install the Classic Version and learn it instead?
    Thank you for any advice you might provide.

  • If you rely on Yoast SEO don’t upgrade to 5.0, wait until they release ‘fixes’ versions. I only started my WordPress site 2 weeks ago so Gutenberg is all I know. Yoast came highly recommended so I installed the plugin. The Yoast SEO plugin doesn’t work with Gutenberg. All my posts are in Gutenberg and switching to classic editor at this stage causes more problems than good.

  • I should have read this article before updating to WordPress 5.0. Now yoast seo isn’t working for me.

  • I was having problems with Yoast BEFORE I updated. In the “Readability Analysis” and “Focus Keyword” sections there is a green loading circle that keeps swirling but doesn’t stop. I am not able to change anything in that area. Also, my photo sizes can’t be changed either and when I try to add a link at the bottom of my post, the task bar does not show up unless I scroll up to the top. Usually, the task bar is seen near where I am trying to add the link.

    This was happening yesterday before I upgraded to WordPress 5. I thought maybe that was the problem so I upgraded (keeping the classic style) and it still shows this way. Help!

  • I just updated to the new version of WordPress, and decided to use the classic editor plugin. Yoast is the only plugin that is no longer working for me…super frustrating.

  • Thanks for the timely write up.I did not update, though I have the classic editor installed.But I have a lot of plugins on my site, and most of them have released updates with gutenberg compatibility. Without any second thoughts, I have updated them all.Waiting for updates for the remaining plugins as well.So far no problem.But suddenly having a feel that when gutenberg itself is not activated, what will become of the plugins which are updated with gutenberg in mind.Am I doing right? Should I continue to update my plugins, even though I have not activated gutenberg? Or should the plugins also not be updated? Pl guide.

  • Well, luckily for me am coming to WordPress from Joomla! and i landed on WP 4.9.8, which had Gutenberg already. I tried it and loved right way. I only used the classic editor once and the rest of my WordPress time (3 weeks) has been with Gutenberg. And for plugins, they are very few for me and are all alreday compatible. If I delay my upgrade its only because i want the CMS to be more stable. Other wise, i love Gutenberg.

  • WordPress 5.0 i believe is going to pretty cool except that only the Gutenberg..
    Hopefully one can switch to the Classis editor

  • I had to use a plugin called “Disable Gutenberg” to my site back the way it was. Boy was I freaking out.

  • i updated already — and so far, it’s been complicated to make a post.
    As a matter of fact I cant — not because i cant try… but because its so uninspiring (I mean its scattered!).

    I’m searching for how to revert to the previous version.

  • Thank you for your informative opinion. I think they aren’t genius except their business. They hadn’t thought what will happen to millions of websites if they publish this major update, though some events are coming near. There’s nothing do to except wait until it’s gonna be stable.

  • I just updated to 5.0 and it destroyed everything. All the Microsoft office word docs. the cells, text don’t line up now. Everything is jumbled up on the website but in the wordpress work area is all one narrow scrunched up margin. I’m unable to use those MS word docs now.

  • My site updated automatically and it really screwed things up. I was almost done preparing for a big Launch and was almost done uploading all my products and new blogs when this happened. Now I have to restore to my site to where it was over a week ago to reload my old version of WordPress (and disable the automatic updates!!!). Then start over reloading all my products again. And re-writing my blogs. Not happy at all. You can tell these techie idiots don’t have to run a business. To do this right before Christmas was unconscionable. I am looking at a very long weekend of work to correct this. :-( I hate WordPress 5.0. I hate the format too and had already installed the Classic Edit plugin. Unfortunately, it didn’t solve the other conflict issues.

  • Waoo! Gutenberg brought the new modern life to my site.

  • WordPress 5.0 doesn’t work for me (yet). The nice thing of the WordPress to me is WYSIWYG. Now what you see in the editor is not the same when you publish it. The layout is also too narrow. For instance in the editor you can see 2 images besides each other, whereas when I publish it I see 3 images besides each other.
    And yeah you can you a classic editor but till 2021. Hopefully by then this problem will be resolved.

  • I just updated my wordpress to 5.0 and guess what it is way more slow to use specially the editor on my web browser. I don’t know how to revert to the old one. I hope i could have read the blog before and skip the update but the damage is done. Any help would be very welcome.

  • Thank you so much! That was really, really helpful!

  • Thanks, I’ll hold my horse as they say and wait for the new year.

  • My hosting company did an automatic update to 5.0 and now I can’t edit any posts. Reverted successfully to 4.9.8. Frustrating. So, NO, you should not update to 5.9

  • I am not sure why they release such an update just before a busy period for a lot of sites. Not sure if they thought this true. We updated only on our staging site and there are some weird things going on. Luckily, not on the live sit.

  • Yes, I updated, and now I have a very weird problem
    Added a CSS file to the site that has 404 : style.min-rtl.css?ver=5.0

  • Thank you so much that was really really helpful — though i have already downloaded and activated the classical editor plugin yet im not updating to 5.0 — id rather wait —
    once gain thanks

  • i was using gutenberg for while and wrote some article with that
    but when update to wp5.0 all my style that gutenberg made to my blocks gone , i activate gutenberg again on wordpress 5.0 !

  • Very good advice… we should wait a bit and let all the installed plugins be updated.

  • So many people complaining bout this update…boggles my mind a bit why people are freaking out so much. They’ve made the entire process 100% optional for us. They even threw in the tool of the classic editor plugin so that if we don’t enjoy the new setup, we can jump back to the old version with a click of a button. If it was a case of being forced to update to 5.0 then i’d agree with all the negative comments, but if you don’t enjoy the update- rather than “snapping” at the dev team- just install the classic editor plugin and “walla” everything back to the way you like it…

  • It is likely really early to upgrade major sites, probably wiser to wait for the next set of releases. Some site authors will be completely confused about the experience as well.

  • Thanks for the advice. It’s the first time for me to update wordpress and I really appreciate your sincere opinion. I thought about waiting anyway

  • Thanks for the post, Joost! I don’t understand why Matt and his team would be in such a hurry to release “the BIG update” when Christmas is around the corner. Thankfully, I have installed the classic editor plugin but I guess I still need to wait until Jan, 2019.

  • Who are the Geniuses who decided to bring a major update that will affect millions of sites before Christmas?
    Who are the Geniuses who believe such big change will be easily applied to millions of small business that will suddenly have to face not only extra costs but also try and explain/teach the new “editor” to their users?
    Who are the geniuses who didn’t set a timeframe for a smooth transition from one version to another?
    I will tell you, they are not geniuses, just self absorbed people who have no clue or do not give a dime how much their actions affect literally millions of people’s jobs.
    Very very disappointed with WordPress and I am glad I do not use it for big projects.

  • Joost, thank you very much for sharing this info and more importantly your wise suggestion to wait for a more stable version on WP 5.

    Considering the Gutenberg plugin has 700,000 installs, with a two and a half star rating based on 1634 reviews [ 5 Stars= 349 only, 4 Stars = 87, 3 Stars = 80, 2 Stars = 142 and 1 Star = a staggering 931!! ]

    Given the scary reviews, needless to say most of us were wondering what to do next. Now thanks your wise counsel , we have some direction on the way forward. Thank you once again.

  • Thanks Joost. Your post is a balanced one but mostly I have read negative comments. Negativity to a point, it sounds, their bread and butter is in danger. Gutenberg seems to be ready, they are not. Why most of the developers out there vehemently opposing it? I am just a blogger, a simple user of wordpress, I just have a feeling that this editor is better than the previous one. Why not contribute to it in a positive way?

  • Great article with solid advice. Thanks :-)

    I think the Gutenberg/WP 5.0 has been the most heavily tested WordPress update in history. Gutenberg is a great update. I agree the timing is a bit of a putoff but if people already have WP 4.9.8 and ave Gutenberg installed there will be very little else that has changed other than possibly some bug fixes.

    If you install and activate classic editor plugin then it will be just like 4.9.8 without Gutenberg.

    As with any WP update, I suggest taking full file/database backup prior to updating, just in case something happens.

    Comes down to personal preferences. I have been testing Gutenberg for months, and been running WP 5.0RC versions for a little while now so am confident everything will work, but still taking backups. Anything can change last minute.

  • I hope that version 4.x will be maintained – at least with security updates. I’ve developed a site based on 4.x and now am a little worried that the site will “crash and burn” when WP 5.0 is rolled out

  • So if i activite the Classic editor first and after hit update tomorow to 5.0 everything Will be fine?

  • Thanks for sharing such a valuable information. We all know that WordPress 5.0 will be the big update and many themes/plugin developers working hard to make things as smooth as possible.

  • I trust nothing wrong in waiting for a couple of updates, say 5.1 or 5.0.1 or even 5.2.

  • Thanks for valuable recommendations.

  • Thank you for sharing that Joost! Very helpful!

  • Thank you for sharing this useful information. I have a question which is the best plugin for WordPress site backup.

  • Better to wait until it’s more stable, some of my plugins and Newspaper theme.

  • Hello and good night,
    Thanks for all the information and recommendations.
    I have a few questions:

    I have 6 posts acceptable and optimized (not Gutenberg)
    And I do have 12 posts without keyword (most of them are Gutenberg)

    I write a keyword target in Gutenberg post but it can not save the snippet or keyword.

  • Honestly, Gutenburg is not very friendly for a nerd who likes typing and having a simple workspace. It’s a cheesy downgrade and the annoying HTML comments after each block don’t help uncluttering in the slightest.

    However, it is definitely a useful tool, just not one I feel that I’m ready to use. The classic editor will probably still my go-to tool.

  • Many thanks for this review and advice – great to have a balanced, pragmatic view after all the rabid pro and con posts on Gutenberg that you see everywhere.

    I’ve installed the Classic Editor on all client sites, but I won’t be updating them until 5.0 has settled down and I’ve had a good look at it on my development sites. There’s going to be a client education process to go through before I spring it on them, and then a process of changing the Classic Editor settings to allow selective use of Gutenberg before going full on once the clients are comfortable.

  • I also think best to wait. Maybe just try a test platform as end of year, and roll out to new customers after new year. Most themes and plugins my customers take are free, so it will be time before they are updated or changed.

  • Great service, thanks

  • I appreciate this post very much, Joost. Your advice not to take unnecessary chances during the holidays makes very good sense, and it means more coming from someone like yourself who is well-informed regarding the background of this release. And the post comments explained how to be sure that our sites won’t auto-update. Thank you!

  • How do I switch from automatic updates to manual before 5.0 goes in effect?

  • I have a WordPress new site and am only vaguely familiar with Gutenberg-certainly not ready to change over. Plus, I’ve been considering changing themes and hosts in the not-too-distant future. That’s a lot of change. I’m currently using Bluehost, which has an option in the control panel for turning off core WordPress updates, with plug-in and theme updates to continue. I’m not a techie and would prefer not to deal with WordPress Configuration file if possible. Will the control panel option suffice for now?

  • Is there an advantage of using Guttenberg over DIVI, when it comes to Yoast, that is?

  • I hate Gutenberg with a passion. It degrades my experience and the way I like to write my posts, which is to write in Word and include all my HTML. The explanations I’ve seen here for its advantages are directed at the more expert WP users and not the end users who are writers first.

    Even now, despite my longtime experience with websites — building pages in Dreamweaver, building my first site in pmachine and now — I still don’t see the advantages. I’d have to put everything on hold and spend a day at least to delve into the documentation. But I run a business that demands more of my time than dealing with this nonsense.

  • I’ve updated and used Gutenberg months ago, however, I must rollback to classic editor due to the missed feature which I think it’s one of the most necessary features. That’s is: “importing the image from URL”. Don’t know if it has this feature on this release.

  • All our existing clients will stay with Classic Editor on 4.9 branch or with the plugin, the learning curve for Gutenberg would be too steep for most, who often don’t know anything at all about computers, they just follow their years long same same steps written on a piece of paper to publish a new post or change their weekly menu page or similar. They have no need to change anything, and mostly no budget either.

    For new new clients we tried to consider Gutenberg since a few months, but as it still is far from ready, each test results in most obvious bugs and editor still feels way too slow in browser until today, we can not recommend Gutenberg for now as well. Maybe we will reconsider this mid 2019, not sure yet though.

    So currently also new projects are done with Classic Editor, and will stay in WordPress 4.9 branch for a while, to allow easy migration to Classic Press or similar, if the Gutenberg ship won’t float as expected…

  • Wait, did you just say Schema blocks? :3

    This happens to be my next big SEO task – is it on the free or premium version?

  • Thank you for the reassurance that it is OK to wait. As I am the Christmas Fairy in our house I have to wave my wand and make it magically happen, while managing two blogs and a “real life” job :)

  • As someone that manages over 200 WP sites, we’ve actually modified one of our own plugins (a security plugin) and put an alert up for our customers, advising them to hold off on updating to WP 5.0.

    As Joost noted, there are too many unknowns between plugins and themes that may come into play here. While I’m excited to see movement forward with 5.0; I, too, share the same concerns that this might have been rushed a little too quickly. While the WP team has to save face (after all, they did promise 5.0 would be released this year, though many of us were anticipating it much earlier in the year), I’m concerned that not enough due diligence was performed.

    We’re going to do the updates, on a case by case basis, and absolutely making sure backups are performed for every site beforehand.

  • Seriously, no share buttons Yoast? I think this is really important to get out to the community.

    I think I will be holding off for me and my clients until January at least.

  • Great advice. I love the new editor and have been anticipating this upgrade for a while. I’ll definitely upgrade some of my sites as soon as the new release is available. And I’ll definitely wait a while before I upgrade others. I also really like the way Yoast has integrated with Guttenberg. You guys continue to impress. Thanks

  • Thanks for your advice. However I have one question: Currently I am using the Gutenberg Plugin and (apart from some known bugs) it works just fine with my other plugins. Can I count on that or will it be totally different when the release is out? I have no staging environment, and for I’m just writing a blog I would like to avoid the effort.
    Thanks once again!

  • Thank you for this confirmation. I think I will also wait until Gutenburg is more stable before plunging into this update

  • Thanks Yoast! The rollout of Gutenberg from start to launch has been utterly hideous. Your posts, comments and videos have been extremely helpful.

  • Hi Guys

    Good advice. I only use premium themes and plugins, which should all be WordPress 5.0 and Guttenberg ready. however i won’t be updating clients sites until after Christmas. Just not worth the risk. Will install and have a gander on a test site though

    Regards
    Dave

  • Is it a code thing only? Can I turn off the automatic update without going to my developer?

  • Thanks for the news. I will update for some business sites with a few posts. Unfortunately when it comes to news sites I will postpone and definitely disable Gutenberg. Our writers don’t want to touch it.

  • Thank you for your valuable and ongoing information on WP 5.0 and Gutenberg. It is very much appreciated!

  • My WordPress updates automatically. How do I stop that?

  • Should I do anything to prevent auto-update, or are major updates like this excluded from auto-updating?

  • I agree. This is hard for those of us who manage sites. When it didn’t roll out on the Nov date, we were told that meant reprieve until January. Springing it on people now with 2 days’ notice, after they’ve assumed a Jan date, is just hard, as we’ve now rearranged our schedules assuming a later date.

  • Thanks for the information and the authoritative “permission” so I can relay this to those who believe Joost more than myself.
    Question for those who have tested Gutenberg in the core: is it basically the same as using the Gutenberg plugin with 4.8?

  • Thank you for information.
    I tried it as plugin but was not working with adsense.
    Let’s see how this upgrade works.

  • Thanks for the quick turn on this post and for your recommendation. I plan to wait until it’s more stable. Although, I am looking forward to the new editor and new Yoast functionality.

  • Hi, it’s good enough to insert this line into the wp-config.php?

    define( ‘AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED’, true );

    Thanks,
    Istvan

  • I have created 2/3 posts in Gutenberg in WordPress dot com blog. Let us see what is the result in self-hosted blogs

  • Completely agree with Joost here. Announcing it 2 days early, just before #WCUS and during the busy December month is just bad practice.